Ambition
by kesshin shinobu
Summary: The Doctor and Rose spend some time exploring; bread is baked and butterflies are fed, but not like you're thinking. Rose learns about curiosity.
1. Chapter 1

Ambition

By Kesshin

"Start out slow first. Then you can risk getting a little ambitious," he skirts the table, lanky hands dragging along the marble, "Just a little, mind. Ambition killed the cat."

"I thought that was curiosity."

He is perfectly serious, "Wrong. Have you ever seen a cat, Rose?"

"Loads of times. Mum kept forgetting to nail our flap shut, so we got all sorts of strays."

"Then you should know what they're like."

She laughs a bit, but only a bit. Mostly she frowns because he's being rude and bossy and she has to think doubly hard. It's not easy, this, even with the instructions he gave her. He told her to stir constantly so she does. Stirring, talking, mixing, talking, arguing…

"But," she argues, "those cats were curious. They were always getting into things."

"Little slower. That's it. No, the cats were not ambitious. You misconstrued their motivation."

Her stirring slows to a halt. He is leaning over the pan to check on the stuff and a boatload of that noxious steam must be getting into his eyes. He doesn't squint, though.

"You're a stronger man than me," she comments.

"We're not men, Rose."

"… Whoa," she backs up and the spoon almost slips from her sweaty hand, "Hold up. One of us, yeah…"

He talks quickly, smile mixing with panic on his features, "Not like that. You know I didn't mean it like that."

"I honestly don't know what you meant."

Those gangly arms cross almost automatically, that chin tilts up to make a razor-sharp point in the laboratory air.

"Not. Like. That. Can it get any simpler?"

"Nope."

"Right. Of course not; so you understand, then?"

"Nope."

For twenty minutes he blares on about what the word "man" means, both in context of species and gender. It sounds like it could be straight out of a textbook- minus the references to arcane alien life forms and occasional swear. He skims around and around the kitchen. Rose feels caught in an eddy of black leather and wildly gesturing arms. She nods and nods and nods, head bent towards the steam in concentration. Still not as close as the Doctor had managed, though.

"Is that any clearer?"

"Yes, I have seen the error of my ways and repent."

Smugness drenches his stance. He's made the little human that much smarter and she wants suddenly to punch him. She doesn't.

"You're still the stronger not-man, though," she says, "These fumes are _killing_ me."

Maybe she's some sort of masochist. The last thing she needs right now is to add fuel to his ego.

"Seems like nothing ever effects you."

Masochist.

"Want to tell me why?"

Scratch that, _curious_. Like the cat that was supposedly killed by ambition.

He doesn't answer at first. He waits until his smugness has melted and mellowed into something more friendly. A tad wistful.

"Oh, you're tough enough."

With that, he's right behind her, a little to the right. His head and neck strain to allow him a glimpse of the stuff in the pan. She sees him at an odd angle but it's a nice one.

"I'll show you how tough I am."

She _really_ doesn't know what made her say that. He smiles a bit and she can see only a corner of the expression, like a beam of sunshine held tantalizingly at bay by a string of clouds.

"You do. Already, Rose, all the time."

His voice is quiet, confessional. It brightens as he adds, "The fumes don't affect me because of my superior physiological make-up."

"Make-up?"

"Not like-"

She shrugs and does her best to be nonchalant, "You just explained to me all the ways in which you are not a man."

"And the ways in which I am. Don't forget those, those are very important."

"Talk is cheap."

He leans on her. Arms crossed over her right shoulder, head cocked as if he's about to say, 'You know _what_?' but he doesn't say that, he says,

"So it is."

Just that. Just that agreement.

The sky is very blue, bright to the point of neon.

"You like Lewis Carroll?"

"Love him. Passionately, madly… We're thinking about eloping."

"Ah," he scoffs, resting his arms a bit. Those trays were pewter and _very_ heavy, "So you don't even know who he is."

She doesn't argue with that. Instead she wallows some more in their surroundings. The Tardis has landed them in some sort of garden. No flowers grow, no vegetation of any sort other than some decidedly wispy grass. The whole place is nothing more than grass, sky, and a waving sea of balloons. The balloons make it into a garden. They sway sedately from tethers of cotton string. Rose has no idea how those bizarrely bobbing orbs got there, and maybe she doesn't want to know. She is content in the knowledge that they simply exist, bouncy and uniformly yellow.

Three pewter trays are set on the ground nearby. And on those trays-

"I know you haven't got your A-levels, Rose, but that's no excuse for ignorance."

"Stop scolding and tell me who he is."

"_Was_. He _was_ a writer and he _did_ write 'Alice in Wonderland.' 'Through the Looking Glass,' too, actually, and I rather preferred that."

"Oh," she settles further into the grass, "Well. I saw the movie."

"You 'saw the movie,'" he mimics, disgusted, "Of all the- Disney's ruining everything."

"Says the man who's seen 'The Lion King' a gazillion times."

He's almost proud, but a dash embarrassed too because that could be true, hinging on how one defines 'gazillion'.

The subject changes, "Bread-and-butterflies."

"…Wha?"

"See! The best stuff is in the books. Thanks to Disney, this becomes that much harder to explain."

"What becomes harder to explain?"

"What we're about to see."

Something stirs the air, and it's not the wind.

"What we're about to do," he says.

They appear small at first, but that's only because they're seen from a distance. When they arrive it is in a giant flock- soft and fluttery and almost completely unlike butterflies. Rose stares.

"Beautiful."

"Are they?"

There is something sharp to his tone.

"Well," Rose hesitates and she's not sure why, "Well…"

He sighs, "Don't worry about it."

It takes the flock several moments to get its bearings. Then it breaks apart, swirling daftly until each member has arrived at about five feet from the ground. Close up, they are the size of Rose's head. They give off the scent of butter.

"Smell that?"

"Yes."

"Hence, the name. Now watch. This is where the 'bread' part comes in."

The creatures dive-bomb the pewter trays. There is a rippling sound as their mouths open. A thousand little sighs echo against the yellow balloons and a thousand pincers tear into the loaves perched atop the trays. All that hard work, all that stirring…

"So… that's why? That was the point of that stupid recipe?"

"Yep. But I wouldn't call it stupid."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The creatures speed up their assault of the loaves, and the butter smell magnifies accordingly.

"What," she mutters, "people do this all the time, then? Sort of like feeding the ducks or pigeons?"

"No_. I_ do this all the time. Everyone else is too busy, and by busy I mean that they don't care. Either that or they're squeamish."

"Because the smell of butter is- nauseating?"

He falls silent. The not-butterflies have finished. They drift back together and float away, against the wind but graceful just the same. Lovely. So bizarre.

The Doctor and Rose sit and enjoy the sky for a long time after the things have gone.

"… Actually, I do think they were in the movie."

"Yeah?"

Heading back, the trays are sun-warm in their hands and infinitely lighter.

"God, those loaves must have weighed… hang on," Rose furrows her brow. Her tray looks empty but isn't. It still has bread on it, gray and drab like pewter with only little bits picked out. It looks like the ghost of bread, zombie bread, dead bread warmed over.

"They sucked the life from it," he explains.

"Urgh."

"Exactly."

She frowns, "But they've only taken the pink part. Those bits, the little swirls you painted on, they only ate those. Why's that?"

Ahead of her there is the sound of a door opening and then closing a little. He's inside. She follows after him and asks again, but he withdraws even further into parts of the ship unknown. Five minutes later there's Rose, standing in an echoing hallway alone, pewter tray and dead bread still in her hands.

"Oh, come on. That's not fair!"

The silence is silent even for silence, but she knows what the reply would be.

'Never said it was.'

And he never had.


	2. Chapter 2

_A nine-year-old Rose had once asked her mother for something educational. She hadn't specified exactly what that something should be, except that it should be a trip somewhere. _

'_Isn't that lovely, sweetheart? Always wanted to visit the catacombs. Just never had an excuse, and now I do.'_

_The 'lovely' object in question was an ornately carved urn. The tour-guide opened it and lifted it above his bald head so everyone could see. Then he lowered it, allowing the shorter members of the tour to get a peek at the ashes inside. _

"_Mum, what is that?"_

_The tour guide answered, "That's a genuine cremated body, pet. Much more efficient than burial."_

_Rose didn't know what 'efficient' was. She did, however, know what 'cremated' was because 'cremated' had happened to her dad. She threw up her lunch in a conveniently placed trashcan off the side of the tunnel. _

"Hello?"

Nothing.

She stands framed in the doorway. The carpet is soft beneath her feet. One step further and that carpet will end with a precise slash and the floor will be wood. Rose doesn't want to take that step, but she will if she needs to.

_A nine-year-old Rose once visited her mother's room in the middle of the night. Several times, actually, but this particular time took place after their trip to the catacombs. _

"_What is it, Mum?"_

_There was a break in the sobbing. _

_Two small feet, size three, pattered over to the frilly old bed. She laid her head in her mother's lap and hugged the leg-shaped bulges that puckered the covers. _

_A laugh sparked in the darkness. It was tired but very alive, raw, "Oh, sweetie. I'm so sorry. You know that, don't you?"_

_A hand rested atop Rose's head, "You know that, right? I didn't think," another laugh, "at all, really. I miss him."_

_Rose hugged harder._

"Hello?"

Right, then. That makes it two times she's tried talking. That just leaves shouting and physical contact. She tells herself that it isn't right to shout, what with the Tardis humming peacefully in the background and darkness flowing along the halls like the Doctor's spilled his ink again. He never does want to use ballpoint pens. It has to be the fountain kind. He looks absolutely ridiculous, lanky man with a leather jacket scribbling away. Letting a dusty feather brush against his nose because he has to bend _that_ close to the paper… She really is getting sleepy. And nervous.

It will be much more gentle if she touches his shoulder. Maybe shake him a bit.

With that resolution made, her foot makes that decisive step of its own off of carpet and onto wood and Rose is in the Doctor's room.

Pillars support a ceiling that could hold two stories' worth of apartments. The few decorations present are mostly architectural, tasteful. All arches and glass and statues of odd little things, newspapers and books lying about. Something resembling moonlight streams in from a casement. It's like a loft from the better part of New York City had a short but heart-felt affair with a gutted Greek temple.

The room is cold; the bed is in the exact center. Rose tiptoes forward and feels nine years old again. It can't hurt to try talking one more time, she thinks. Then she stops thinking because she can see him now.

He sleeps in sheets and nothing else. His face is still, the blank slate that becomes painted with expression when he's awake. In sleep that face is positively regal, with only the slightest, bitter wrinkle about the brow betraying turmoil underneath. She wants to press a finger to that wrinkle so she does.

He shifts. The press becomes a poke.

"You sleep in the nude?"

Slowly, his eyes open. He blinks. He raises the sheets with a languid hand.

"Oh. Well, yes. Never took you for the briefs kind. Sorry. But, they are white. I just thought, with the sheets…"

"What do you want, Rose?"

"I was hoping you could put the sheet back down, that's a priority."

He does.

"I was also hoping that you could answer my question."

His face stiffens. "Yeah, sorry; I'm a little busy right now," The Doctor puts his head back onto the pillow, wincing as he eases further under the covers, "R.E.M.ing and all that," his eyes close, "Sleep's good for the brain, Rose. Everyone should get all they can."

She watches his breathing even out. Watches his chest rise and fall. It's time for her to leave, she knows.

"Graah!"

The sheets make a most satisfying swishing sound as they're ripped into the air. You could chill a sun with how coolly he takes it.

"Rose?" he says, so calm.

"Yes?"

"Do you mind?"

"Oh, I do, rather."

"Right, then."

Sadly, the Doctor underestimates his Under-Sevens-Gymnastics-Bronze-Medal-Winning traveling companion. She's pretty fast.

She leaves him grabbing vainly at empty air while his liberated sheets caper off out the door and into other parts of the Tardis.

He watches her leave. Annoyance overtakes him for all of fifteen seconds until gravity catches up. His outstretched arms tip forward, and he lands on the floor.

Annoyance leaves, and he's grateful instead, that she's not there.

A familiar pain wracks his body. He's very cold. It's all he can do to not cry out, so he swears. There are some bits of Gallifreyan that the Tardis is reluctant to translate. He says all of those. It's all finished off by a bit of English that she doesn't have to translate. Just to be polite.

"Fuck."

"I was going to say 'you wish,' but you started crying."

She'd been watching from behind the doorpost for minutes now. It irks him that he didn't notice. At the moment he is a little busy trying to ignore two things. One is that he is mostly naked. The other is that Rose is hugging him. Separate, those things are not problems at all because he rather enjoys the freedom of going 'all natural' and he certainly enjoys the occasional hug from Rose. It's just that the two don't mix.

"Am not," he says belatedly, "More importantly, where are my sheets?"

"Yes you are and God, you're a block of ice. I'd better get you a proper blanket…"

"Rose," he breaks the hug and his hands circle either of her arms, iron bands, "My _sheets_."

She knows that look, and the weight it carries. "Okay."

He's left freezing on the floor while she retrieves the sheets. Upon her return she wraps them around the Doctor like he's some sort of half-baked mummy. Then it's back to business.

"Why are you-" she begins. He stops her.

"You want me to be clear? This is about as clear as I can get, you ready? I do _not_ want to talk about it."

"Why?"

He disguises a groan of pain with a sigh, "Oh, that's you, isn't it? You can't be content with the way things are, just have to analyze everything to bits."

He stands. The pain gets sharper and the sheets tangle in his spindly legs, "All those questions."

There is the sound of feet stumbling and cloth tearing. For the second time in as many minutes, the Doctor falls. Rose keeps him from landing on his face. Barely. She's flushed with adrenaline and a little fear as she helps him lean against the bed. Her voice trips over itself.

"And here I thought you liked questions."

The last thing he'd wanted was for her to see him cry. So much for that. But beneath even that is something worse, a thing that he will never, ever want.

The Doctor watches the dewy wetness appear around her eyes with a sort of horror.

"Rose, I'm fine. I really- look, it's…"

"It's what?"

"It's-" the words won't come. He tries again, "It's just gruesome and unpleasant and, above all, incredibly uncomfortable."

"So's a bad case of the flu!"

"Then that's what I have, Gallifreyan flu. Naturally superior to the human variety."

"So it turns you into an icicle and makes you fall over?"

"Yes."

"Makes you cry?"

"With _joy_."

"Not because you're racked with hideous cramps and muscle spasms?"

"Wouldn't say so, no."

"Doctor!"

"Rose!"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Doctor!Tell me what's _wrong_!"

When he doesn't answer, she sits beside him, back against the bed. Her shoulder touches his shoulder. She lets some warmth bleed into him and hopes it does some good.

"I just came to ask about the sodding butterflies, anyway."

"Don't sulk," he says. _Don't cry_, he thinks. She's looking more pissed off than melancholy at the moment. That is a step forward. Or sideways, at least. He likes sideways. He considers.

They watch the pseudo-moonlight creep across the room.

"Well, fine."

"'Fine', what?"

"Fine," he grumbles, twisting his sheet-cocooned body to face her. Two lithe, pale, and obscenely cold arms untangle themselves. He grabs her toasty little frame with vigor. She feels like a hot bath in winter, and he doesn't think he'll ever let go.

"And by that I mean that I'll indulge your ambition."

She shudders. That could be a sign of discomfort or disgust or hypothermia or… something. It's too early for hypothermia, anyway.

"My curiosity, you mean?"

He sets his forehead against her forehead. His is cream-colored. Hers is turning a fascinating shade of magenta.

"Have you ever seen a cat, Rose?"


	3. Chapter 3

_A nine-year-old Rose once tried waking up early to make pancakes for her mother. It was the morning after the catacombs trip. She did wake up early, but when she walked into the kitchen her mother was already there. Making pancakes. _

"The planet has an unusual situation."

"The balloon planet, right?"

"Yes, the balloon planet," he rolls his eyes.

"With the yellow balloons?"

"How many balloon planets have we visited, Rose?"

"…"

"Oh. Well, forget about that other one. Actually, forget about talking, period. I'm trying to explain things."

"No need to be rude."

"You woke me up by poking me in the head."

"And then stealing your sheets."

"That you did."

"Right."

"Now shut it."

She does.

"There was a time period when it was fashionable for people to design their own planets. The richest, about the top point one percent could afford it. But wealth can't get you everything."

A phrase of 'Can't Buy Me Love' drifts between them, followed quickly by 'Money, That's What I Want.' Rose tries not to grin and fails.

"Now there was a confused lot," he raises an eyebrow, "The hair was my idea."

"Seriously?"

"Continuing," he continues, carefully ignoring her protests, "A certain man from Petra bought up the balloon planet, back when it was just rocks and dust. He set some bio-engineers to fixing it up. Think of it as 'Extreme Home Makeover: Planetary Edition.'"

They both smirk.

"But like I said: money. Just can't get you everything. In this man's case, what it couldn't get him was decent bio-engineers. They screwed it up. Fact is, every custom planet worth its salt or various other electrolytes is supposed to be self-sustaining."

"And this one wasn't?"

He blinks, "No. It leaked energy. Loads of it. Planets like the Earth are well experienced; they're naturally adapted to their own form of energy conservation. The planet the man from Petra bought wasn't properly balanced," His eyes narrow in a way that comes off as lidded. Sad, rather than fierce, "It was dying."

"Well, didn't anybody do something to fix it?"

"Nope. The man lost all of his money on bad investments. Proper energy conservation was the last thing on his mind. Which reminds me, Rose, try to find yourself a decent sort of financial broker."

Her breath comes out in one sharp 'Ha,' right in his face, "Like I'm going to take any advice from you on money. Anyway, _somebody _must have-"

"You're not understanding me. I've said it before, but I'll say it again," their foreheads press closer, noses touching, his voice sharp, "Your 'somebodies' are nobodies. Because nobody cares about that planet."

"You do."

"Yes, and I take care of it as best I can."

The moment stretches out into the air. Rose takes some seconds to come to terms with the fact that the Doctor is forehead-to-forehead with her, mostly naked, and worried sick about a flock of sinister butterflies. It's not as easy as she'd hoped.

She breathes.

A thought meanders into her mind, unbidden.

"What do you do to take care of it?"

"I introduce outside energy into the planet's enthalpy cycle-"

"No, I mean specifically," she bites her lip, "What do you actually do?"

There it is, that stiffening of the face again. It's easier to see this time because…. _Well_. Proximity.

"You saw," he says.

"The bread? It had pink swirls."

"So it did. And I think it's time for me to be getting back into bed-"

"But," she frowns, "They weren't pink. They were more of a… sort of a watered down red? Would you call that watered down red? 'Cause it wasn't pink, not really."

"Rose, just-"

_Oh_. She has another thought just then, 'cause he had talked about being queasy… Giving energy away, and God he's cold.

Red. Not pink.

"Let me see your arm."

It's just a thought, she tells herself, wide-eyed, just a horrible little thought. She'll take a look and see how utterly wrong…

"No."

The light in the room seems thicker, as does the air. It makes breathing difficult. Talking, too, so they don't.

The Doctor's skin is soft. At any other time she would make some joke about that, but it's not any other time, it's this time. Her fingers sweep from shoulder to elbow to wrist, to fingertips. He doesn't stop her.

Then-

His arm is dragged from the sheet and into the light.

A band-aid.

"A band-aid?"

"Is that a problem?"

She giggles painfully. He looks at her like she's a leaky mayonnaise jar filled with a particularly volatile from of nitroglycerin.

"Rose-"

"Is that why you're cold? Is that…"

"Yes."

"And the cramps?"

"Those too."

His injured hand wraps around hers, absently, "Just three drops, mixed with water."

Red and white make pink; red and clear make light red. Like mixing paint.

Those little swirls.

"I'll be better in the morning," he says, sounding bright and worried, with a chaser of vague exasperation, "right as rain."

"But right here, right now, you have to go through this."

"No worse than Gallifreyan flu."

"That really exists?"

"Makes you cry with joy."

It occurs to Rose that, when it comes down to it, they know each other too well. He looks like he knows what she'll say next.

It also occurs to her that she'd prefer it if he didn't.

"I think we need some sleep."

When their foreheads break apart, his is warmer and hers is colder, and where they had met they were the same.

She leaves.

His eyes watch her go.

She doesn't make so much as a swipe at the sheets.

In an hour's time Rose is in the kitchen, and this time she knows exactly how fast to stir.

_A nine-year-old Rose once spent an entire day with her mother, doing anything and everything that wasn't educational. _

"_Margie says I don't know anything," Rose confessed, still working on her pancake, "And I want to know stuff. I wanted a real educational fieldtrip."_

"_So that was why? Oh, sweetheart," Jackie wiped the syrup from her daughter's mouth, "Just point her out and I'll kick her arse. How's that sound?"_

"_She says I swear a lot too."_

_After careful and thorough consideration, it was decided that Margie was a true twit, as well as something that rhymes with "tanker." _

_They played Frisbee at a park by the estates and went shopping downtown. And when the sun had set, Rose and Jackie wandered home to watch Disney movies._

_Rose fell asleep halfway through one of the films. She could hear her mother talking softly beside her, right before consciousness fell away._

"_All those flowers, singing away in that big garden," Jackie murmured to the air, "Part of what gave you your name. Because it was June, and you were blonde from the moment you were born. A right little Alice," she dusted a kiss across the top of her daughter's head, "But Alice is a bit of a stuffy name."_

The balloon planet is cool at night. Rose steps out onto its grass-matted surface, struggling against the weight of the pewter tray. There's just one loaf this time, with a single jagged dash of watered-down red.

He's watching. He's been watching since she walked out of his room, everything from the boiling to the stirring, to the painstaking shaping of the loaf. She can't really see him, but the disapproving quiet is a dead giveaway. That quiet got especially disapproving when she raised a knife to her pinky.

'The little idiot's going through with it,' the quiet seemed to say, 'No surprise. But if she so much as thinks about using more than a drop, I'll have her head.'

The Doctor couldn't see her grin. Her back was turned.

She had made sure that the paint mixing was clearly visible, though. Just a drop of blood with two drops of water.

Now she is outside and the Tardis door is open. All the better for hidden, disapproving supervision.

The creatures take forever to come. Rose's knees are creaking by the time the first one arrives. Only one comes, in the end, though it's big enough for three.

The single insect is as eerie as before, like a butterfly but not. The darkness deepens the shadows in its wings. It lands on the tray and bites down.

When it leaves, Rose grasps blindly at her solar plexus; ice has invaded her chest. It makes her stumble, and Rose thinks that it is a weird way to die, death by metaphorical icicle through the gut.

Someone catches her.

Well, of course.

"Idiot."

"Yep."

"So bloody ambitious."

"Meow," she says half-heartedly. It makes him smile despite himself.

Rose spends the rest of a night on a couch in the Tardis library. The Doctor checks in periodically, poking his head around the corner. He wraps sheets around her and brings her tea.

"And a hot shower wouldn't hurt," he says after one of his check-ins.

The coldness and cramps must be making her giddy, because she thinks of all sorts of lewd replies to that. She doesn't say them, though. At least not out loud.

She just holds her arms out, and he knows what she needs.

'Resistance,' the thought spins around her head, 'is futile.'

And it is. He frowns, but when she budges up and he squirms in next to her his face brightens.

His head settles next to hers. Their foreheads touch.

"Did I help any?" she coughs.

"Some. The planet won't need any more outside energy for another fifteen years."

"And without my help that would have been…?"

"Fourteen years and ten months. Human blood isn't quite so potent. But," he adds cheerfully when she groans, "Every bit helps."

"Remind me to kick you when my leg's defrosted. And I suppose you're going to say something about your reckless companion?"

The Doctor smirks and sets his head down, eyes closing. He looks smug and superior and probably warmer than her now, that smile in particular.

It's simple curiosity that leads Rose to test out that theory. Forehead contact isn't cutting it.

It delights her to discover that, soft though his arms may be, his lips are infinitely softer.

His eyes aren't closed anymore.

_Jackie didn't have the heart to wake her daughter when the movie ended, so she placed a blanket on her and made sure her toes were covered. It would be fair to end by saying that a nine-year-old Rose once slept on the couch. _

_She dreamt of bread-and-butterflies. _

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_-end_

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_-Thank you for reading. Reviews I receive are cherished, savored, and remembered forever. _


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